I'm the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Hitched, a service and lifestyle online magazine for married couples. I grew up in a stable and loving family with two working parents and saw a need for a marriage magazine while in college. I graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in journalism and spent over six years at Entrepreneur magazine where I moved from intern to managing editor of Entrepreneur.com—all the while researching and developing Hitched. While still working at Entrepreneur, I launched Hitchedmag.com with the help of life-long friend and co-founder Gabriel Lefrancois. I quit Entrepreneur to grow my company, but have continued writing and reporting on business issues as I combine my love of journalism and passion to help promote healthy and happy marriages through Hitched.
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The Internet Is A 21st Century Utility And We Deserve Better

For businesses to be competitive in the future they'll need competitive internet speeds. (Photo credit: twak)

If you had to give up your internet or your home phone, which would it be? Without hesitation I’d give up my phone—in fact I did that over a decade ago. I’m not alone either. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, more than one third of American homes no longer have a landline. Conversely, Nielsen recently reported that over 212 million Americans were active online last September with close to 300 million with access—a number that has continued to grow.

As our country has developed, the U.S. government has recognized the importance of keeping our large swath of land connected. Public utilities such as railroads and electricity grids were put in place and became the envy of the world and the foundation of many innovations. Today, the FCC has put together a National Broadband Plan to help us maintain a competitive edge. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’re shooting for the moon on this one.

The plan has set a goal of 4 Mbps (megabits per second) download of universal coverage around the country by 2020, which it says would support the basic usage of e-mail, downloading web pages and simple video conferencing. Really? Maybe for today’s web pages and video conferencing, but I’m guessing that by 2020 a lot more data will be going back and forth to our ultra HD screens and cameras. Besides, even if our web pages and video conferences don’t progress as quickly as I anticipate, that doesn’t mean the rest of the world will wait for us.

According to the latest State of the Internet report from Akamai Technologies, the U.S. ranks 9th in the world for connection speed with an average of 7.2 Mbps. That means the U.S. just needs to double its average speed to get close to South Korea at 14.7 Mbps. You might think that the 7.2 Mbps sounds pretty good, but remember that this is an average, not a baseline.

The Internet Is More Than Kitten Videos, Really!

In Germany, where Akamai ranks their average speed at 5.9 Mbps, The Federal Court of Justice granted a person the right to claim compensation from their service provider if their internet access is disrupted because the Internet is an “essential” part of life. Germany obviously has different laws than the U.S., but if their courts are beginning to recognize the importance of the internet as an “essential” right, it might not be too long before domestic legislation begins to reflect that same reality here.

The internet is how most of us communicate today. The internet is how we job search, how we get our news, how we invite someone to our party, how we find the weather forecast, to see what movies are playing, to check if the local restaurant offers a gluten-free menu. The internet is how we now do business, from stock trades to video conferences. A survey by recruiting and employment service website, Weddle.com found that just 6.1 percent of respondents were not posting their jobs online. If you’re looking for a job, 50.8 percent of them are now hiring over half of their new employees online and 25.4 percent were hiring 9 out of 10 workers from the internet. If that weren’t enough, a report by the The Boston Consulting Group found that 21 percent of Americans would give up sex to keep the internet on for a year; in Japan that number jumped to 56 percent, which isn’t surprising since they rank 2nd in the world for internet speed with 10.5 Mbps.

There Is Hope

Last week FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, announced the Gigabit City Challenge, which is aiming for at least one gigabit (equal to 1,000 Mbps) community in all 50 states by 2015. Today, the FCC reported that just 42 communities in 14 states have access to that kind of speed.

One place you will find 1 Gbps speed is in Kansas City, Kansas. Last year Google awarded their service to the city after many months of courting by other municipals. As a result, entrepreneurs from across the country have been moving to the city so they can tap into that sweet digital highway. In fact, some programmers are shacking up in “hacker homes” with other like-minded digital pioneers.

What’s shameful is how quickly Google was able to roll this out and how slow other internet service providers have been to put the U.S. back on top. There’s obviously a cost associated with putting down new wire, but there’s also an economic return. Remember how moving from dial-up to generic broadband helped push the Web 2.0 movement, launching such sites as YouTube and Netflix. Imagine what an internet 100 times faster could offer! So far, the economic return in Kansas City hasn’t been overwhelming, but with only 42 other communities within the U.S. able to connect at full capacity it’s hard to know what could be possible.

In the 20th century, it was our goal as a society build one rocket to get a man on the moon. In the 21st century, we all need our own 1 Gb rockets so we can explore the next frontier of cyberspace—we’re currently sitting on the launchpad while eight other countries are taking off.

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